The principal aim of this pilot study is to determine the utility of an experimental paradigm for investigating a neglected area, namely, how would-be helpers react to the spurning of their offers. It is proposed that when an offer of help is spurned, such a rebuff induces stress in the would-be-helper who, as a consequence, will then engage in cognitive, evaluative, and behavioral activity aimed at reducing this aversive stress. Stress magnitude is viewed as dependent on certain personal moderators, such as those contributing to the helper's private and public self-image; and on certain situational moderators, such as the nature of the help, the context, the recipient, and the helper-recipient relationship. Although conceptually related to investigations of the antecendents and consequences of stress in human service providers, especially to studies of "burn-out", the potential ramifications of the present problem are believed to extend considerably beyond the relatively circumscribed, instrumental contexts that characterize those investigations. It is considered, for example, to have implications for the development and maintenance of both self-efficacy and compassion. In this pilot experiment, undergraduates will be invited to participate as prospective tutors in a "feasibility study on peer tutoring." During the experimental session, a recipient said to be in need of remediation on vocabulary will reject/accept an offer of help (rules for word construction) on an easy/difficult task, then fail/succeed on a comparable task. Dispositional measures of interpersonal control, empathy, and interpersonal attribution will be administered beforehand, while the subject's mood, causal attributions for the acceptance/spurning, evaluations of an attraction to the recipient, will be measured subsequently. Two other studies are projected to follow the present one, time permitting, as the first phase of a research program on reactions to spurned help.